CACKLE COOK’S MONSTER STEW

Age Range: 4 - 7

Wolff manages to be gross without getting nauseating in this witch’s brew of ABC’s. Cackle Cook is throwing together her famous stew when she discovers she is missing some key ingredients, the very stuff to make it supremely repugnant. She’ll need that ancient ape’s short armpit hair and that half-inch square of big brown bear. She sends her ghoulish pal Igor to the store—he hates shopping—time and again to get all the goods: “One hobgoblin’s knobby nose / nine or ten iguana toes / Three large jars of jellyfish jelly / A piece of pocket from a kangaroo belly.” Schindler does a fine job with the ingredients, with just the right bilious colors, and his population of witches and ogres are comfortably spooky. When Igor returns with the last of the fixings—“The hairy hump from the neck of a yak / A dusty clump from a zombie’s back” (his own)—he dances a little jig, Cackle Cook judges the stew a success (“YYUUCCKK!!” she shouted. “It’s just right!”), and the doors to her world-famous restaurant are thrown open to a long line of waiting monsters. Igor first, though; he may hate shopping, but he does like eating. (Picture book. 4-7)